I live in a land called Mid-America. Here, we want less government involvement in our lives. And we're mostly non-elite, working middle-class. "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Comments for the day

Paul Krugman, who is growing more and more disconnected as time goes on. (Maybe he's getting pissed off because his economic theories aren't really working in the real world.)

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

So the $3 trillion in deficit spending over the last two years is "not as much as you might think?" Spend five minutes with Google, and you'll discover that total government spending -- federal, state and local -- was 6.9 percent of GDP in 1900. This year, it will be 40 percent. That's more than $6 trillion. Yet Krugman wants all government to spend more. The more the better. Total state control goes along with that.

Reader comment of the day, found on wapo:

...I wish leftists would not use the term "progressives." My family has lived under socialism, and there is nothing "progressive" about a command-economy, secret police, gulags, government enforced mediocrity, voter-intimidation, loss of liberty, or the other "blessings of socialism." Obama-slobberers really need to spend some time in a socialist country, and then maybe they will understand why refugees come here rather than flee to North Korea or China. Even Michael Moore left Cuba.

Along these lines, from John Krausher, a communications consulting, writing for FoxForum:

....Moynihan further observed that, “The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.”

It’s ironic that for all of the liberal left’s piousness regarding values like tolerance, privacy and conservation, we see many examples of hypocrisy in their views. The liberal left demand tolerance for their free speech and protests, but want their critics suppressed or silenced. Liberal leftists find no problem with privacy invasion if bureaucrats muck around in your medical records or hackers publish Sarah Palin’s private e-mails. Apparently it’s “do as I say, not as I do” when liberal leftists like Al Gore and Barbra Streisand live in energy-hogging mansions and travel the world in fuel-guzzling private jets. Meantime, they lecture conservatives and want them to pay dearly because of their “carbon footprints.”

President Obama is trying to rally his liberal left base to turn out and vote in November. But the rigidity and destructiveness of the liberal left may backfire on the president. Liberal left excesses will motivate Republicans and Independents upset with Obama’s leftist policies to turn out in droves, swamping the number of liberal leftists who actually vote.

Moynihan said that, "Liberalism faltered when it turned out it could not cope with truth."

As that applies on Election Day — and going forward — Daniel Patrick Moynihan may turn out to be more prescient than anyone.

And some wonder why we're where we are.

8 comments:

Anonymous
said...

And some wonder why we're where we are? That's an easy one. 8 years of Bush and the Republicans. Just open your eyes and look at what they did to the robust economy they inherited. Totally trashed it....

From FOXNews, TODAY.Nearly half of voters — 47 percent — think Bush's policies are mostly to blame for the economic difficulties the country is having today, compared to 32 percent who think Obama's policies are to blame.

It's interesting that at one time you accused me of cherry picking data.

Here's some more of the story:

Americans may still blame George W. Bush for the sorry state of the economy, but they're tired of hearing Obama talk about it. Bush still leads Obama 47 percent to 32 percent when voters are parceling out blame for the economy (17 percent blame both equally), but a jaw-dropping 76 percent say it is not appropriate for Obama to continue to blame his predecessor - that includes 57 percent of Democrats. Only 29 percent believe the Obama stimulus prevented a depression, as the president claims.

And since you seem to only have one answer for everything, I find it quite boring, hence the yawn...

Yes, you are correct. I have one answer, the obvious one, as to WHO wrecked the economy, and even the FOX crowd agrees, but they, the FOX crowd, are tired of hearing about it. I would be too if the situation were reversed, but that doesn't change the facts Bush wrecked the economy. Whether Obama should speak of it is another question. Personally, I don't think a statute of limitations should apply to acknowledging such an obvious fact. Here we are 85 years after the sinking of the Titanic, and people are still, rightfully so, blaming the captain. No big difference...

Well, you can believe what you want. Sure, Bush has to take some of the blame (the buck stops here). But as I've posted before, a lot of people had a hand in it, including many from the Democratic side as well (Dodd, Waters, Franks, etc).

It's not a simple as "It's all Bush's fault."

And the fact that Fannie and Freddie, which had a big role in this mess, are not mentioned in the new financial "reform" bill, goes to show you how corrupt our congress is. And I've read that these two agencies continue to get taxpayer dollars and are going back to practices that screwed everything up.